How do you feel about surprises? Sure, they can be fun when you return home to find all of your friends and family are throwing you a surprise birthday bash. But they’re usually much less enjoyable when they’re concerning your bank account.
That’s why I’m constantly trying to stay ahead of the curve in order to keep Wall Street Informer members from running into something they aren’t expecting.
With that being said, go ahead and circle December 16th on your calendar. Here’s what’s coming…
All signs are (once again) beginning to point to significant actions being taken next month. With the most recent Labor Department report including some pretty significant numbers, that fate seems increasingly inevitable.
Yet we’ve had similar circumstances before, only to have them vanish when the market took a dive.
But in any case, we can only prepare based on what we know. And thanks to the Labor Department’s report for October, we now know all of this…
1. Nonfarm payrolls increased by 271,000. The two previous months saw increases of just 137,000 and 153,000, so this is clearly a huge step up. The average over the past 3 months is lagging behind that of the first half of the year, but October’s boost is significant.
2. The jobless rate fell from 5.1% to 5%, indicating full employment.
3. Average hourly earnings jumped up a hefty .4%, which is another strong sign for the labor force.
So what does this have to do with December 16th?
As you know by now, we’ve long been awaiting rate hikes out of the Federal Reserve. Well, the Federal Open Market Committee will be meeting December 15th and 16th. And with Fed Chair Janet Yellen already commenting that interest rate increases could be a real possibility starting in December, this recent economic data should only affirm that sentiment.
We’ll see if this news spooks investors like it did back in August, especially on the back of a market that has only just recovered since that tumble.
